Miss Nikki Plays American McGee's Alice
by nikkilittle
Summary: Bad things happen to inept video game players.
1. Chapter 1

Miss Nikki Plays American McGee's Alice

by Nikki Little

Now it's true that I've played through American McGee's Alice in its entirety several times, always on "easy" level. Even on "easy," there were certain levels just I just never seemed to be able to complete. The worst was that great underwater Olympic swim level that comes right after the Duchess boss fight. I long suspected that the 32-megabyte video card in my two g4 iBooks was to blame for the Mock Turtle always disappearing right at about the three-fourths point in the level. The water effects were just too much for a 32-megabyte video card. Well, no more excuses! Now I've got an iMac desktop which has a built-in 128-megabyte ATI video card. A monster compared to what I've had before! Finally, I was going to complete that damn underwater level that I'd always skipped before by typing into the console.

My first try had exactly the same result as my attempts on the g4 iBooks. I drowned Alice yet again. Damn, I hate to watch her drown. It looks so real! A second try, a third try, a tenth try, and so on. All had the same result. As before, I kept losing the Mock Turtle in the exact same spot. I saved the game about ten seconds before losing the Mock Turtle and tried replaying from that spot. Cough, cough, cough... It was horrifying. I guessed that I must have drowned Alice a hundred times before I heard that knock on the door.

I put the computer to sleep and went to answer the door. The sight before me shocked me so badly that I fell flat on my fanny. Good thing it's well-cushioned. I might have broken a hip. Lara Croft slapped handcuffs on my wrists.

"Nikki Little, you are under arrest by the Video Game Character Protection Committee. In drowning Dark Alice over 100 times in the level Wholly Morel Ground you are guilty of Character Torture. You will be tried by a committee of video game characters and sentenced."

They hauled me off to some secret underground cavern that I'd swear no one except other arrested video game players knew about. A jury of Lara Croft, Heather from Silent Hill 3, Dante from Devil May Cry, and SuperTux -- huh? -- found me guilty of "Character Torture." I now reside in an underground prison where the computers -- all virus-infected PC jalopies with no internet running Windows ME -- have only copies of the Myst games and Hardwood Solitaire. Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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This posting was smuggled out of prison by carrier Dormouse.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Escape from the Island of Incompetent Video Game Players

After several very uncomfortable nights locked in a tiny cell, a familiar face came by in the dead of night. It was Alice! She jammed her knife into the cell lock, jiggled it around a bit, and the lock -- it must have been made in China -- popped apart into at least a hundred pieces. Alice grabbed my hand and we ran down the corridor to a door. She looked like a drowned rat. "I always look like this. I get drowned thousands of times every day." She stopped in front of one cell where a shaggy, bedraggled-looking middle-aged man was sleeping. "Dinner, asshole!" Alice reached into her apron and threw a nasty-looking freshly killed rat into the cell.

When we reached the door, I turned around and asked. "Who was that?" Alice hesitated a moment. "Just some shlub independent video game developer I snatched from Shanghai."

"You didn't mention his name," I said.

"American McGee."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: "The Disabling Factor of Enormous Boobs"

Alice led me to the shore of what appeared to be an enormous, windswept island. There were no trees anywhere in sight. The ground was covered with flowers and a strange-looking cabbage-like plant. "Those are indeed cabbages," said Alice. "They're quite tasty. I eat a lot of those. There really isn't much to eat around here except the cabbages, fish, and, of course, the seabirds which nest around here." Alice rubbed her vorpal blade with a bit of pride. "I'm quite a good shot, you know. We eat eggs, too. I've eaten so many eggs that SuperTux tells me I cackle in my sleep."

"And just who gave you permission to release the wench?" Alice and I both whirled around. It was Lara. Uh, oh... Alice folded her arms across her chest. "Get over it, Lara! Everybody drowns me in Wholly Morel Ground and Waterlogged! I've got the asshole who is responsible for that. That scraggly, middle-aged hippie whose ass I kick every morning and to whom I feed rats for dinner. Stop grabbing the video game players! Even SuperTux drowns me in Wholly Morel Ground!"

Lara was obviously pissed and was not going to give up without a fight. She whipped out a BFG. Alice rolled her eyes. "Not again," she whispered to me. Lara had the gun aimed at Alice, but Alice did not flinch. Alice stood there examining her nails, yawning, scratching her head. Lara continued to fumble. She couldn't find the trigger. "Happens every time," whispered Alice to me. "All Lara can see is miles and miles of boobage." Alice casually pulled the jackbomb out of her apron and rolled it right underneath Lara. Poor Lara didn't notice a thing. BOOM!

Up went Lara. And down she came. Lara bounced. And bounced again. And bounced another time. "Oh, dear," said Alice. "Lara landed on her boobs. When she lands on her boobs, she ends up bouncing for around fifteen minutes before she finally loses momentum." I watched the spectacle. It seemed we had time for a bit of chit-chat.

"Why does Lara seem so eager to fight you?" I asked.

"She's jealous," answered Alice. "Ever since that study was done on who video gamers considered the sexiest female lead video game character, she's hated me."

"You?" I asked. "You're what video gamers consider the sexiest female lead video game character?"

"Yup," said Alice. "I was mystified myself, at first. I won in every category except teenaged males. You know, the guys that buy games to stare at fake girls because they can't get a real one. Geeks love me. Women love me. Grown men play me in shamed secrecy. Scared of getting caught role-playing an eighteen-year-old girl. Chess club geeks think I'm the prettiest teen-aged girl they've ever seen." Alice fluttered her eyelashes at me showing off those famous emerald-green eyes. I could see why chess club geeks would go for her. The last thing any chess club geek wants is some top-heavy wench plopping her enormous, sweaty boobs down on top of his expensive, hand-carved wooden chess board.

"So how do I get home?" I asked Alice.

"There's a research station with a bunch of scientists. You can catch a boat ride when the next supply vessel comes by. It might be awhile before the next vessel comes. You're on Kerguelen which is a very remote island. Come on, I'll lead you up to within sight of the research station."

Lara bounced by. Boing, boing, boing…

Version 2


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: "It's All About Staring at Her Ass!"

Alice and I trudged along in silence toward the research station. She reached into her apron and handed me a wad of one-hundred dollar bills as if they were no more than a handful of change. "You'll need these to pay for your passage back to Australia and then back to the U.S." There were at least fifty bills in the wad.

"Where did you get all this?" I asked.

"Where else? From asshole. You wouldn't believe how much cash that guy had stuffed into his clothes when I snatched him from Shanghai. I'm sure it was parking meter change to him. He sure got rich off of me!"

We trudged along another minute in silence, and then a solid block of water fell out of the sky and landed on Alice knocking her down on her caboose.

"Damn! I hate it when that happens! Somebody just drowned me in Mystifying Madness. Oh, well. It beats getting eaten by snarks." Alice was soaked from head to foot and her clothes were sticking to her. Alice stood up.

"Whoa!" I couldn't help staring. For all the jokes about Alice being scrawny in the game, it was now abundantly clear that the girl had an ass.

Alice noticed me staring and then grinned. Why was she grinning? I understood when she slapped me on my ass. "My ass may be big," Alice said, "but yours is even bigger." I gave the old Brazil a shameless jiggle in her face.

"There's a reason game developers like to use women as lead characters in third-person shooters. It's all about staring at her ass! I cursed American for giving me this big caboose, but as people played the game, I realized that it was a blessing. Seriously. With people always using my dress to ride air currents, my center of gravity has to be below the waist. If I were shaped like Lara, I'd flip upside down every time and go plummeting to who knows where!"

"Hmm...," I said. "That certainly makes sense." I was still staring. I couldn't help it. It was so unexpected. The rest of Alice was quite slim. Too slim in my opinion.

"It's a blessing in another way, as well. People are always jumping me two stories in the Skool. If I didn't have this built-in seat cushion, I'd die for sure when they do that. As it is, I land on my feet, fall backwards, bounce on the seat cushions, and I'm right back up!" Alice slapped her behind, grinning. "American actually did me a favor!"

"Splat!" Lara landed right in front of us. This time she stopped bouncing. Alice snatched away her BFG and asked, "Are you going to do your usual, Lara?" Lara shook her head up and down and ran off in the direction of the underground prison we had just left.

"Lara is always extremely horny after bouncing on her boobs for awhile. I don't know what it is, but she just goes crazy!"

"So why is she going back to the prison?"

"She drags American out of his cell and has her way with him. He doesn't like it much."

"What??? You're kidding! Doing Lara Croft would be the ultimate fantasy of most gaming geeks!"

A long, loud howl of agony came from the prison.

"Yup," said Alice. "Lara's workin' him over good!"

"Why would he object?" I was truly mystified.

"Don't you know?" said Alice, slapping her behind. "American's an ass man!"

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End of Chapter 4

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This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) holds the copyrights.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: "The Fountain of Fan-Fics"

Still soaked from her recent drowning and starting to shiver, Alice quickened her step toward the research station. As we were walking, she seemed to disappear from view for a moment, and then reappeared covered in a green, gelatinous substance that reminded me of troll snot from a Harry Potter movie.

"THAT DAMN FISH!!!" Alice sputtered, eyes bugging and arms held straight out to prevent any more fish gut slime from dripping on her. Ah, yes. That fish in Hollow Hideaway. Alice had no need to explain. We trudged on with Alice muttering an incessant stream of profanities combined with musings about what to do with American McGee's genitals. Judging from the screaming coming from the direction of the prison, I'd venture to guess that Lara was already putting Alice's ideas to good use.

As we were walking and listening to the sweet music of American's howls from the prison, a stench as horrific as an Ohio rest stop in the 1960s wafted across our path. "What's that stink?" I asked.

"It's the Fountain of Fan-Fics," Alice chirped, momentarily forgetting that she was still dripping green fish gut slime. Yuck...

"The Fountain of Fan-Fics? What's that?"

"It's the servers of Fanfiction dot Net. They stink so bad that no country but France would host them. After a day or two, even the French gagged and they stuck the servers down here. The Kerguelen Islands are a French territory. You will notice that the French were careful to place the servers downwind from the research station. Listen! Do you hear that sound? It's the sound of a Mary Sue being uploaded!"

It sounded like a Peace Corps Volunteer with dysentery. I continued to listen. A different sound came along. "What are those sounds?" I asked Alice.

"Those are regular stories being uploaded. Stories that aren't Mary Sues."

"Why do they sound like turds dropping into a toilet?"

"What's the difference?"

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End of Chapter 5

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This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. Electronic Arts holds the copyrights.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: "Attack of the Weather Channel Zombies"

Alice and I kept hoofing it toward the research station, and her clothes started to dry off from the wind. The fish gut slime solidified into a kind of dry, plastic-like substance which flaked off the same way that dried snot on a sleeve flakes off. Yuck! Sure glad it wasn't me. When Alice and I walked in the front door of the research station, it didn't take us long to realize that something was wrong. We had expected to see lab equipment and scientists walking around in lab coats. Instead we saw television screens up on the walls by the hundreds -- each with some fool standing in torrential rains, strong winds, even hurricanes as he, or sometimes she, blathered out painfully obvious commentary. Glassy-eyed technicians tapped away at keyboards in front of computer screens, and every once in a while, one would whip out a revolver and blow his brains out. The dead technician would remain slumped over his keyboard for perhaps ten minutes or so before a bored-looking janitor would come by with a flatbed and screech "Your dead! Bring out your dead!" Alice and I were fascinated at this glimpse of corporate work life and must have spent an hour there just watching some poor damned soul blow his brains out every now and then. We looked at each other and came to the same immediate conclusion: some corporate media conglomerate had bought out the research station and turned it into the international headquarters of The Weather Channel. Registered trademark.

Up on the solid glass roof -- probably solid glass to take advantage of heat from sunlight -- we saw a new group of Weather Channel (Registered Trademark) recruits parachute down to replace all of those who had just offed themselves at their computers. That was when we realized that there would be no boat coming to give me a chance to get off the island. So much for paying for passage or stowing away. Alice watched the glassy-eyed technicians and finally asked me. "Do those technicians remind you of someone from the video game?" I watched for a few minutes, and it finally dawned on me that the technicians stumbled around like the insane children from Alice's video game. We got the crazy idea of using them to storm the underground prison. All we had to do was figure out a way to get them to follow us the way the insane child followed Alice in Majestic Maze.

"So how do we get their attention?" I asked.

"We flash them," said Alice.

I looked at Alice's chest. She looked at my chest. "With what?" I asked.

Alice looked at my ass. I looked at her ass. Alice spoke first. "We moon them. There's no way they could miss seeing what we've got. On three."

On three, Alice and I hiked up our dresses and dropped our panties. Neither one of us wore girdles or slips or hose or any other of that girly stuff that tomboys despise. We waved our naked fannies in the general direction of the living dead, and promptly caused water to start running in sinks and paper towels to start rolling out of dispensers. "Come on now!" Alice howled. "Our butts ain't that big!" The paper towels continued to spew out. I grabbed Alice's head and turned it in the direction of the glassy-eyed technicians. "Oh, no!" shouted Alice. "Run!"

Yes, indeed. Here they came. By the hundreds. All spouting off drug commercials. "Got high cholesterol? Ask your doctor about Liposux! Side effects include strokes, heart attacks, brain liquification, and your whole body blowing up like that aunt in the third Harry Potter movie!"

We ran like hell back toward the prison. Every minute or so, we heard one of them off himself with a revolver.

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End of Chapter 6

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This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. Electronic Arts (EA) owns the copyrights. Securom 7 owns your computer.

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Plot? What fuckin' plot?


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: "Asparagus and Beer"

With the prison in sight, Alice unexpectedly shot forward as if out of a cannon. She landed right next to the prison door and yanked it open for me. The entire backside of her dress was missing and her panties were scorched black. She was soaking wet. "Mad Andy must have used another jack bomb boost in a speed run. I hate that guy. Always blowing me up. And somebody else drowned me. Man, does life as a video game character suck. Why couldn't I have been the anonymous traveler in Myst? Straight down the corridor. We'll duck into American McGee's cell."

We left the door conveniently open for the zombie hordes, and, as expected, they ran right past us, trampling everything in front of them. They did a good job of clearing all of the prison guards out of the main corridor, but none of them had enough brain power to turn into the two side corridors. "Give me your panties!" screeched Alice. She then took off her own panties and ran out into the main corridor. "Looky here, assholes! See! Panties! Whee!" Alice tossed one pair of panties into the left corridor and another into the right corridor and then ran back down the main corridor and side-jumped into the cell with American McGee and me. The zombie hordes raced after the tossed panties. Well, the male zombies, anyway. Apparently the female zombies still had a few brain cells. They stayed at the end of the corridor.

Alice peeked out of the cell and noted all the female zombies at the end of the main corridor. "Damn!" she said. "We've got to clear the female zombies out of there to get to the portals. Alice pulled a bar of chocolate out of an apron pocket and stepped back out into the hallway. "Yoo-hoo! Hey all you skinny bitches! Look! Chocolate!" I peeked around the door and saw Alice toss the chocolate bar down the right-side corridor. The female zombies looked unimpressed. One looked straight at Alice and said, "Fattening." Alice stomped back into American's cell.

"This is ridiculous! All the zombies in the world and I get a bunch of anorexic bitches with eating disorders! Whoever heard of zombies with eating disorders?" I suggested that female Weather Channel (registered trademark) zombies might be figure conscious because they have to stand in front of a TV camera sideways. We heard a loud disturbance in the right-side corridor. Alice took a peek and discovered that the male zombies were fighting over the chocolate bar. Well, they were trying to fight over the chocolate bar. None of them had figured out how to turn around yet.

Alice came back and scratched her head. "I can't use most of my weapons without risking damage to the portals behind the door. Maybe I can try dropping my jacks up close to the bitches." Alice sauntered up to within five feet of the female zombies, tossed her jacks, and then ran back to our cell. We peeked around the corner and saw that the jacks had no real effect. Alice started to look at American sprawled out snoring on his bunk with a copy of "Naked Video Game Babes" in his lap. The centerfold was Princess Peach. She poked him.

"We're going to need asshole here," announced Alice. American was still woozy from being "worked over" by Lara Croft and didn't look like he'd be of much use to anybody. "American, yoo-hoo, asshole!" cooed Alice in American's face. "Want some asparagus and beer?" American snapped out of his haze as if somebody had flipped on a switch. By this time the back of Alice's dress had grown back. There was no trace of the jackbomb boost. I wondered if Alice also had a new pair of panties. I decided that it would be unwise to lift her dress to check.

"Asparagus and beer?" queried American. Suddenly he looked deliriously happy -- like a teen-aged boy who had just been "worked over" by Lara and her flotation devices. "He loves asparagus and beer," said Alice. "They're his secret weapon. He can clear away anybody from anything once he's had asparagus and beer."

"And just how does this work?" I asked. "Is asparagus and beer for him sort of like spinach for Popeye?"

"Sort of," said Alice, "but in a very different way." Alice put a heavy emphasis on the word "different" which left me with a sense of foreboding. "I'll be right back. Just a quick trip to the kitchen in the left side corridor. The male zombies don't have enough brain power to turn around."

Alice was gone for about four minutes, and returned with two armfuls of six-packs of Australian beer. "Drink up! Asshole! I'll be right back with your favorite sauteed asparagus." I didn't realize the significance of the beer and asparagus combination right then. American pranced around the cell. "Aparagus and beer! Asparagus and beer! I'm gonna get me some aparagus and beer!" I couldn't help staring. I wondered if making "Bad Day LA" had permanently fried his brains.

Five long minutes later Alice returned with the sauteed asparagus. She held it up as if feeding a seal and tossed it. American scampered around the cell catching every toss of the asparagus. I tried to look the other way. The relationship between these two was just too weird.

After the asparagus was gone, American stood up, thumped his chest like a gorilla, and tucked the remaining ammo -- the six-packs of Australian beer -- under his arm. "Okay, I'm ready! Who do I have to chase out?"

"You see those female zombies at the end of the corridor? Get rid of 'em!" American looked at the female zombies and unzipped. Out it came. His weapon. His corridor clearer. I screamed. I couldn't help it. I hadn't seen one like that since I watched that porno Alice movie with the Mad Hatter as a flasher.

American stepped into the hall, gripped his spray nozzle, and guzzled another six-pack. He advanced on the crowd of female zombies continuously spraying green mist in all directions while guzzling one six-pack after another. The stench was horrific. Now I know where he got the idea for Grimm. The female zombies steadily dropped to the floor as the green mist enveloped them. Alice and I hung back waiting for the mist to clear as we moved forward toward the door to the portals. The green mist congealed on the floor and walls and looked like seaweed. Beer cans littered the hallway. I wondered if this guy had ever managed to hit the toilet even once in his life. Maybe he used the bathtub.

"It's the aparagus and beer combination," said Alice. "It turns urine, or at least American's urine, into a thick, green, smelly liquid. Keep quiet about this. Can you imagine what the Pentagon would want to do with him if they knew about this?"

"I thought you hated him. Why would you care?" I asked.

"Would you want the Pentagon to get ahold of that stuff to spray-bomb valleys with?" said Alice. She was entirely serious. "His kidneys are a deadly weapon. Some general would stuff him full of asparagus and then strap him to the bottom of a crop duster with a beer helmet on his head!"

It was all over in two minutes. Every last female zombie had collapsed to the floor, twitching, choking, and coughing. The way to the portals was clear. I was about to go home.

I should have kept my mouth shut. Alice set the portal to drop me back in my house. Just before I stepped into the portal to go back, I asked Alice, "Did you know that American has a development team working on a sequel to 'Alice' in Shanghai?" I should have kept my mouth shut.

Alice went crazy. As I stood in front of the portal, Alice began chasing American tossing one jackbomb after another. Right out the door of the prison. I waited a few minutes and could still hear jackbombs going off in the distance every four seconds.

It's good to be home. From now on, it's X-Plane for me. And if you do ever see "Alice 2" in the video game stores, have a little mercy. If you buy it, switch on the notarget via the console. Alice's ass needs the rest. So does American's.

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The End

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This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the rights.

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This story is entirely a work a fiction. Any resemblance to characters living, dead, or developing video games is accidental and unintentional. Please don't sue me.

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"...all over the road, technicolor, man..." --Loudon Wainwright III


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